


lights will guide you home

by Trojie



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Accidental Cuddling, Alcohol, Angst, Demon Blood Addiction, Denial, Drinking to Cope, Drug Addiction, Friends With Benefits, Invasion of Privacy, M/M, Painkillers, Porn With Plot, Vomiting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-17
Updated: 2013-06-17
Packaged: 2017-12-15 06:29:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/846371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trojie/pseuds/Trojie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kevin's a wreck. Sam's a mess. There are differences between <i>using</i> and <i>running</i> and <i>coping</i> but sometimes they're just technicalities.</p>
            </blockquote>





	lights will guide you home

**Author's Note:**

> This story forms a closed loop between 8x14 'Trial and Error' and 8x19 'Taxi Driver' - canon compliant before, theoretically canon compliant after, but an alternate continuity in between. 
> 
> This was meant to be rarepair friends-with-benefits porn simply because why the hell not? Has turned out as an angsty shipping manifesto with extended addiction themes. Whoops? ~~I REGRET NOTHING~~. Title from 'Fix You' by Coldplay. Beta-read by the one and only Signe_chan, who persuaded me of the pairing in the first place and put up with an awful lot of whinging in the process of me writing it.

'You want a coffee?'

Kevin looks into the depths of his mug. Empty. 'Please,' he says, and tries not to get frustrated with the noise of Sam filling the percolator, rustling around for coffee and mugs and spoons. 

Kevin gets frustrated with just about everything right now, though, so it's kind of a lost cause.

They're supposed to be babysitting each other, as far as Kevin can tell. Dean basically locked them in together, saying until Kevin figured out what the second trial was they couldn't 'risk' Sam out on ordinary hunts, and they couldn't risk leaving Kevin unguarded either. Two birds, one stone. Neither of them like it, but neither of them had a good counterargument, so they're stuck with each other. Sam drinks too much when he thinks Kevin can't see him, although given how much his brother drinks where anyone can see him, Sam probably thinks he's being really moderate and sensible.

He coughs up blood when he thinks Kevin can't see him too. Kevin doesn't say anything, just watches the way he hunches and flinches and hides, and wonders if Dean noticed, if this is why he dumped Sam here.

Kevin's head has hurt for so long that he's forgotten what pain actually feels like, forgotten what it's like not to have a sour bellyful of painkillers on top of his coffee, and he hasn't got any patience any more. None. He barely tolerates himself - this headache, this dryness in his sinuses that distracts him, they're just weaknesses he knows he can't afford but he hasn't managed to train himself out of yet - so how is he supposed to deal with Sam as well? 

Kevin just wants everyone out of his space. He needs to _work_.

Sam wants to help. He says it like a stuck record. And then he makes goddamn coffee when Kevin doesn't have anything for him to help with.

No-one can help Kevin with his fucking destiny. He reads languages no-one else can and writes down his crazy, gibberish dreams on scraps of paper because if he doesn't his brain feels like it's exploding. He knows Chuck turned the dreams into novels. He knows prophets back in the day wrote gospels out of them. But Kevin has other shit to deal with - tablets and translations and the gates of Hell themselves, so the Gospel of St. Kevin the Utterly Screwed pretty much is gonna have to be compiled out of post-it notes as and when (and if) ever he gets a spare moment. 

Hah.

When Sam comes over with another mug of coffee, the papers have encroached over the last clear bit of table, and Sam instinctively tries to swipe some of them away. Kevin jumps. 'Hey, man, no,' he says, hurriedly shuffling them into a pile. Some of them are bits of dream and some of them are tablet notes and some of them are research, but they're all important. 'Careful.'

'Sorry,' says Sam, looming, hovering with the coffee. Crowley used to call Sam 'moose' and now that he has to share the houseboat with the guy Kevin finds himself thinking it's not that far from the truth. It's unfair, because in his crazy prophet moments he's seen Sam stitch wounds and cast spells and write complicated sigils, and knows he's capable of delicate work, but all he can think is, _jeez, get this Neanderthal out of my way_. 'Look,' Sam says, clearing his throat. Kevin's managed to make enough space, so Sam puts the coffee down. 'I get that pinning it all up on the wall's a helpful way of visualising data, but some of these notes … wouldn't it be more use to have them typed?'

'Yeah, cause I have so much time to spare on data entry,' Kevin says with a roll of his eyes that he regrets as soon as he does it, like so many of his knee-jerk reactions these days. 

Sam doesn't seem too phased by his rude behaviour, though. And again, Kevin's read Chuck's novels and manuscripts, been hallucinating bits of Sam's life for a while now, so he _knows_ what a short fuse the guy has but it seems like he's managed to make it real slow-burning over the years. 'I could type it for you,' Sam says, shrugging. 'I mean, I won't be quick, but it'll get done.'

Kevin's feeling foggy and he would really, really like a clean desk, and he also wants Sam to leave him alone, so he scrapes the rest of the papers into a rough stack and hands them over. 'Thanks,' he says. 

He doesn't really think Sam's going to get much sense out of it. Some of the bits of paper only have one or two words on them. They're all out of order. Most of the useful ones, tablet-wise, are already up on the wall where Kevin can stare at them. Attempting to type them all up like they're any other kind of paperwork is just going to be a mess, really, but at least it's work. 

Sam retreats to his laptop. Kevin chucks down a few more off-brand painkillers, buries his face in his coffee and his brain in his work, and doesn't think much more about it.

***

Kevin doesn't even notice Sam again until a tin plate of hotdogs and salad materialises in front of him. 

'Oh, hey. Thanks,' he says, looking up at Sam and blinking. Sam … kind of looks like shit. 'You didn't have to -'

'How much of our lives do you see?' Sam asks. Kevin freezes, deer in the headlights - Sam sits. 'The prophet before you, Chuck,' he says, when Kevin still can't think of words, 'He saw pretty much everything. And then put it all up for sale.' He looks like he's still mad about that.

Kevin mysteriously found all of "Carver Edlund"'s collected works, published and unpublished, next to his bed the first week here with Garth. All Garth would say about it was to tap his nose and tell Kevin they'd help. Mostly they just gave him opinions about trashy literature he couldn't even vent by blogging, and made him squint funny at the whole Winchester family dynamic, but that wasn't the point. The point was that even Kevin could see they were hugely invasive. Maybe that was Garth's whole plan - to teach Kevin How Not To Be A Douchebag When You're A Prophet Of The Lord by negative example.

'I - I don't, like, write it up,' he says, stumbling over how to say what he means. 'I mean, I wouldn't - I just scribble down what I see and try to forget it. Normally the headaches help with that,' he adds a little bitterly. 'I don't exactly get a choice about having visions.'

'But how _much_ do you see?' Sam asks. 

Kevin shrugs. 'I guess … only the 'important' bits? I mean, it's not like I've got twenty-four hour Winchester cam, y'know?'

Sam looks down at his hands. At this angle, the shadows under his eyes are deeper, more like hollows. 'You saw Amelia though, didn't you,' he says.

Shit. 

Kevin didn't just see Amelia. Kevin saw Sam _with_ Amelia. It came out of nowhere one day, the first time he'd seen Sam since before the fight with Dick Roman - he knows now that Dean was in Purgatory and Sam gave up hunting, but at the time he had no idea what had happened to either of them because not only did they drop off his radar in the normal human way, but they dropped off Prophet-vision as well. He figures, now, that it's because they were both out of the story. 

Leaving Amelia is where Sam's personal narrative joined back up with Heaven's main plot arc. That's when Kevin figured out _why_ he'd been abandoned. And wasn't that a hell of a vision?

'Only once,' says Kevin awkwardly, like that makes it any better, like he didn't sit on the edge of his bed and try desperately not to look at his own prophetic dream, not to get hard over it, not to _watch_. But the point of having prophetic dreams is you have to witness them. So yeah, Kevin's seen Amelia. Quite a lot of Amelia. And of Sam. 

Kevin had been on the run for months by that point, and he was tired, bone-tired, and the vision hit him like a punch to the gut. It took him by surprise, okay, and it's not like he _did_ anything over it. Just blushed fit to burn, sat on his hands, willed it to be over. God, did he will it to be over - he hates seeing shit he was never meant to see: Sam's hands on Amelia's hips, her eyes closed, his slanted and dark, intense, lip between his teeth, brow wrinkled because he's concentrating the same way he does when he's suturing one of his own wounds. 

'When I left Kermit that last time, right?' Sam asks. He's still staring at his hands rather than at Kevin's face. 'That's the only time?'

The fuck did Heaven want Kevin to see Sam having sex, anyway? How is that relevant to anything? What kind of religion are they running up there? 

'Yeah,' says Kevin. 'I swear.' He's almost bracing himself for the way Sam's fist is gonna hit his jaw. Because Sam has to know _what_ Kevin saw, it's not like 90% of his and Amelia's last deep and meaningful interaction didn't happen in bed. 

Sam looks up at him, and the punch Kevin was expecting is in his expression - straight to Kevin's gut. 'You haven't seen her since?' he asks, and okay, maybe this isn't the conversation Kevin thought they were having.

'No,' he says tentatively.

He realises later why Sam kind of sighs with relief - realises that the people he isn't dreaming of are the safest. He also thinks later that maybe it wasn't Amelia that he was supposed to see - it was that Sam left her for the cause.

***

The hotdogs don't stay down. Three am and Kevin's worshipping the porcelain altar, trying to stay quiet because this fucking tin can they're stuck in echoes like a bitch, and all that good dinner is coming back up. 

He's used to this. 

***

Kevin's alarm goes off again just after daybreak. The back of his throat tastes of acid and bile. It's Thursday.

Sam's cooking pancakes and there are twelve white plastic bottles of Advil lined up on the table, sitting on Kevin's work. Kevin sits down and reaches out to move them, and Sam picks them up, all twelve bundled together in his two hands.

'I get that you need them,' Sam says, pulling an 'I'm-not-mad-I'm-just-disappointed' face that starts something a little angry bubbling in Kevin's already churning gut. 'But you gotta eat if you're gonna take them the way you do.'

'I can't keep food down,' Kevin points out. 'You think I haven't been trying?'

'You're not used to having anything in your stomach,' Sam says. 'But you can get used to it again, if you just go slow and steady. Trust me, I know.'

Kevin has one pancake, no syrup, for breakfast. He almost resents that he doesn't throw it up again. 

He gets a handle on two new words on the tablet though, without the distraction of his gnawing stomach. One is 'sacrifice'. The other is 'light'. There's still not much context, not much of a framework for him to put them into, but he writes them down and walks over to the cold, sweaty iron wall and sticks them up. 

'Hey,' he says, remembering an old idea he's never had anyone to ask about before. 'Is this Enochian? You know, the angel language?'

'Yeah, I know,' Sam says, getting up from his laptop and pretending he's not trying to work the kinks out of his long back as he stomps over. He squints at Kevin's wall of notes and sigils, and reaches out to trace them with his fingers. 'I dunno,' he says eventually. 'I only ever heard it spoken - never seen it written down except phonetically in English. Sigils, sure - not sentences.'

'It sorta makes sense that tablets would be in angel language, right?'

'I guess, but I know Crowley speaks Enochian, and Cas does too - so if it is Enochian why can't they read it themselves?'

Kevin sighs. 'It was a stupid idea.'

'No, it wasn't,' says Sam. 'I just … I don't think there's a lot of logic behind any of this, y'know?'

Kevin stares at his wall of gibberish and tries not to feel like it's crushing him.

***

'You know those things'll kill you one day,' Sam says half-jokingly, half way too deadly serious, the next time Kevin downs a chemical lunch with a coffee chaser. 

Kevin bites down on a sharp retort and the sharper taste of bile in the back of his throat. 'One day,' he says instead, and shrugs. 'I'll clean up on the other side. I just have to get through this.'

'Except it doesn't work like that,' says Sam. He looks aside, and his jaw tightens almost involuntarily. 'You'll always be able to find a reason to keep going, there'll always be something that needs doing, and you'll think, just one more day. And then one day you're gonna wake up and you won't be able to stop. It'll stop being means to an end and just _be_ the end, even if you can't admit it.'

Sounds like Sam knows that story by heart. But Kevin's pretty sure he's read the novelisation.

'Just because you got hooked -' he snaps, and Sam's fists clench either side of his laptop on the table.

'Don't believe everything you read,' he growls.

He must know Kevin's read Chuck's writing. It's not like Kevin's had anywhere to hide the books and the half-edited manuscripts. Then again, it's not like Kevin exactly pored over them, either. He read them, yeah. But he read the Bible too. Was there supposed to be a point here?

'It's prophecy,' Kevin argues. 'It happened.' 

'Not the way he wrote it down, it didn't. Chuck thought he was writing bullshit trashy fiction,' Sam points out. 'You think he didn't edit, after the headaches went away? Not the bare bones, sure, but he ... spun shit around sometimes. Left stuff out, too.' 

Kevin can believe that. He's never wanted to play with his visions, never wanted to make sure they were some kind of sparkling prose, but there have been bits he never wanted to have to write down, never wanted to admit he saw. For a start, if he'd felt like he could, if he hadn't known what it was he was seeing, he would have left out Amelia and Sam and that last raw moment. He would have left out Amelia entirely, because she was Sam's hiding place, and if he was writing a novel about Sam and Dean Winchester, Monster Hunters, they'd never hide, never run. 

But they do. Kevin's pretty sure that Sam still is.

'So you tell me,' Kevin pushes, because he wants some truth to ground him, because no-one else has ever been straight with him about all this supernatural bullshit. 'Tell me how it wasn't the blood that made you do it.' He knows how it started. He knows Sam was force-fed as a baby, then drip-fed blood cut with lies later, until he was hooked. He doesn't _blame_ Sam. 

And he's hit, suddenly, by the sight of Sam on the other end of the table, with his fists clenched still and his expression hard. It doesn't matter whether he blames Sam or not. It isn't his place, and it doesn't matter what anyone thinks or says. Sam blames himself. 

'Nothing can make you do anything,' Sam says, eventually. 'Either you're gonna do it, or you aren't. Whether you facilitate yourself or not is a different game, Kevin. I made stupid decisions and I did bad things. _I_ did. Me. The demon blood was just how I got it done. That's all there is to it.'

'So it was you, then,' Kevin says. He kinda hopes this is when Sam'll give up and leave him alone. Maybe when Sam will realise that this situation only looks the same on the outside. Maybe Kevin's overdoing it. Maybe he's _using_. But he's doing it so that he can get through - so that he can do this big, important job that apparently only he can do. 

'Yeah,' Sam says, looking Kevin dead in the eyes. 'It was me. All the bits that counted were me. I would have done it anyway.'

***

Three am finds Kevin over the toilet again, forehead on the cool surface, nothing left to give in his stomach and Dean and Garth covered in vampire blood running through his head still. He needs to write this down - they were saying something, something that sounded important, about Crowley, about searching for Lucifer's crypts.

Kevin realises he's muttering it out loud about the same time he realises he's not alone in the bathroom.

'Here,' says Sam, pushing a pen into Kevin's cold, clammy fingers on the bathroom floor. Kevin scrambles to grip it and realises there's paper there too - a college-ruled pad. He starts to write, pen held like a chisel. 

Sam's fingers card very gently through the hair at the base of Kevin's skull, start to rub circles into the aching, rock-hard muscles of his neck. He starts out soft but keeps pushing, pressing, until Kevin's ready to whimper with how much it hurts - until the knots work free, and then it feels good. Better than anything has felt in a long time. 

Kevin makes an indecent noise under his breath, but keeps writing. Nothing right now is more important than writing this down - not the blood pounding in his head, so hard he can feel it reaming out his veins, not Sam's strong fingers inching lower to the first vertebra between his shoulderblades, not the roiling, churning hell in his gut. Nothing. 

Eventually the words peter out, and Kevin lets the pen drop. He also lets Sam pull him by the shoulders away from the toilet, into a sitting position half in the crook of Sam's long, stretched-out legs. 'No wonder,' Sam mutters, digging into the meat of Kevin's back. 'No wonder you're so fucking grouchy,' he says louder, when Kevin makes an enquiring noise. 'No, this isn't working,' he adds, and gets to his feet in a smoother action than should be possible, as far as Kevin's concerned, and tugs Kevin after him. 

Kevin groans. Right now he just wants to bury his face in his pillow and go to sleep. But Sam drags him back into the main open galley space and pushes him into straddling an old dining-table chair, one with a high back. Kevin gratefully rests his pounding head on the chipped, varnished wood. He's beyond caring what's going on any more. His God-given talent is torturing him. 

Sam is apparently a man on a mission. He shoves his thumbs either side of Kevin's spine like he's digging for gold or something. It fucking hurts, but every time he moves on a centimeter or so, he's leaving pummelled-out muscle in his wake, untying the ruin of Kevin's back. 

Kevin slumps into the chair and lets it happen. 

He slowly comes to himself as the tension in his muscles lessens and that lack of pressure means his head isn't hurting so badly. He sniffs, something burning and warm in the air. Sam's practically crouched behind him now, pummelling Kevin's lower back, and Kevin realises that the scent is riding on Sam. 

'You've been drinking,' he says stupidly, because yes Sam's been drinking, Sam tends to do that late at night. You knew that, Kevin, he tells himself. 

'Need a couple to help me sleep,' Sam grunts, voice somewhere at the level of Kevin's shoulders as he works on Kevin's back. 'Lucky for you, wasn't done yet when you started reenacting the Exorcist out there.'

'Of course. Yeah. Sorry,' Kevin says haltingly. 

'Bad vision?' Sam asks after a while. His digging fingers have started to smooth back out again, back to circles up and down the loose undershirt Kevin sleeps in. 

'Dunno,' says Kevin dully. 'No-one died.'

Sam kind of huffs a bitter laugh, and says, 'Been there,' sympathetically. He pats Kevin gently on the shoulder, universal signal for 'you're done', and pours out a pretty generous measure of bourbon into the cloudy glass sitting next to the bottle. 'Here,' he says. 'Go get some sleep.'

Kevin downs it, regrets it when it rips across his raw throat, and hands the glass back. 'Thanks,' he says, feeling the rough edges of his voice more now. 

'Want another?' Sam asks, already halfway through pouring it.

Kevin shakes his head. He needs to get horizontal before his temples explode. 

Sam shrugs, tips the bourbon back himself. His throat hollows, and the space under his collarbone is smudged dark. He's losing weight. When he puts the glass down, he coughs into his fist and Kevin catches the way his eyes flicker down to it like he's expecting to see something there, and back up to Kevin like he's daring him to say something

Kevin trudges off to bed before he can open his big, stupid mouth. They aren't going to have that talk tonight, if ever.

He lies on his side and lets his eyes unfocus, looking through the open door, watches Sam's feet under the table in the shadowy umber-yellow light-bleed from the lamp, and after a while the light goes out and Sam pads into the next cabin over. Muzzily, Kevin notes that Sam doesn't bother closing his door either. Well. They're heavy doors.

Kevin either doesn't sleep or he's dreaming about being awake. Either way, he turns his alarm off before it goes off, and starts another day even though he doesn't really feel like the last one's ended yet. 

***

Kevin never feels like he's reading the tablet so much as waiting on hold while God decides whether or not to let him have a word today. He stares at it, trying desperately to find patterns, some kind of meaning in the script, but he can't make connections. He's not a linguist - let's face it, he didn't get tapped for this job because of his grades in languages or literature. Which kind of begs the question then of why he _did_ get tapped. And he's asked himself that one enough. 

There isn't an answer, at least, not one he can work out. Ineffability, he supposes. That's what they call it, isn't it, when you don't know what the fuck God is up to? Kevin Tran as a prophet is right up there with slime molds and platypus and the extinction of the dinosaurs in the list of 'We Can't Work Out What God Was Thinking'.

'Dean's on his way back towards here, gonna do a supply run before he turns up - you want anything?' Sam asks, coming into the room with his cellphone cradled against his jaw. 'Anything that doesn't require a prescription, anyway.'

'Peanut butter cups,' Kevin says absently, rubbing the pad of his thumb along the sharp, broken edge of the tablet. 

'He says peanut butter cups,' Sam repeats into the phone, sounding a bit dubious about it. 'Yeah. I know. Okay. See you soon.' He hangs up. 'You okay, Kevin?'

'Fine,' says Kevin. 'I'm fine.' He feels like his head is carpeted on the inside, actually, and his left eyeball is twitching, which is weird, but he's kind of in the zone right now. There's a symbol on the tablet that's calling to him. He can get this one if he just concentrates. And he can concentrate, right now. 

Objectively, he's aware that being 'in the zone' is pretty much a handy side effect of being so sleep-deprived that you can only manage one thing at a time, but who cares? It works. He could really use a coffee. 

'Sure,' says Sam, which suggests that maybe Kevin said that last bit out loud. 'You eaten yet this morning?' he asks. 

He sounds cagey, like he wants to ask a different question but doesn't know how Kevin's going to react. Kevin finally feels like a real translator when he hears that, weirdly, because this is subsurface and yet he knows what Sam's getting at. 'No,' he says, squinting at that maybe-nearly-a-word-symbol. 'Haven't taken any Advil either,' he adds.

Sam brings the coffee over. 'How's your head?' he asks. 

'Better,' Kevin says. 'This one says 'bring',' he adds, because there it is in front of him. He's been taken off hold for just long enough to hear it ring like a bell in his head. 'Bring. Or brought. Bringer?' Kevin's head swims for a moment, bloodless, and then the carpet inside it gives way to razorblades again. 'Fuck,' he says thickly, and then darkness swirls up and he thinks his head might hit the table.

'Kevin? Crap - _Kevin_ -'

***

Kevin wakes up slowly, piece by piece, until he reaches the point where he can feel all four limbs and manage to actually roll himself over. He blinks, because this isn't the cabin he's been sleeping in - this one's almost bare, and doesn't smell of socks. 

'Wh're 'm I?' he mumbles, unsticking his face from the pillow. 

'Still Garth's houseboat, unfortunately,' says Sam. Kevin manages to slump forward into a sitting position and sees Sam slouching in a chair in the corner of the cabin, his laptop and a stack of Kevin's 'notes' spread across his knees. 'My cabin, because yours smells like something died in it. And you've been asleep for nearly a day, before you ask. Dean brought you those peanut butter cups you wanted.'

'Th'nks' Kevin says. His mouth _tastes_ like something died in it. He swallows hard to try and force some moisture into it. 'Ugh. What happened?'

'You passed out,' says Sam. He shuts his laptop. 'Then you threw up about a pint of what looked like stomach acid and blood all over your bed, which is the other reason you're in here.'

Kevin winces. 'Sorry,' he says. 

'I threw away your Advil,' says Sam. His expression is this whole martyr-parent one that Kevin's mom used to get when she pointed out to him that _'this is our life now, Kevin'_ as if it's his fault. But it's _not_ his goddamn fault. He never asked to get stuck with this crappy gig. He's just trying to get on with it. And Sam is not his mom. 

'But I need it,' Kevin says, too groggy to come up with a better argument. He runs a hand through his hair. He should probably shower, if he can stand. He really wants to get out of this room, out of Sam's space and out of his eyeline and out of this sick feeling of being on a leash short enough to choke on. 'That isn't - that's not your decision.' 

'My job right now is to keep you safe,' says Sam stubbornly. 'I don't need your permission to save your life.' 

'Fuck you,' Kevin rasps. 'It's _my_ life.' 

_And you're being overdramatic,_ he doesn't say. _And where were you when it was a demon making me bleed?_ he wants to ask. _You ran out on me before, Sam Winchester. You run out on people all the time,_ Kevin thinks bitterly and doesn't say. _You always run. Ran away from home, ran away to college, ran away from hunting, ran away from Destiny, ran away from Amelia ... You're fucking running right now._

He realises that the grim set of Sam's jaw and the hard look in his eyes is guilt, then. They're on exactly the same wavelength here, but neither of them is going to say it. And Kevin is here to look after Sam as much as the other way around. Dean told him so, and Sam looks as rough as Kevin feels - his hair's lank and his eyes are hollowed and his shirt is hanging on him wrong. Kevin is doing a crappy job. 

Kevin hauls himself out of Sam's bed with as much dignity he can muster, which isn't much when he realises he's only wearing boxers. He threw up in his own bed - must have got himself, too. Sam must have cleaned him up. Great, because Sam needed one more reason to think Kevin's helpless. 

'This is bigger than your college-kid issues,' Sam snaps as Kevin walks towards the door on bare, unsteady feet. 'Get over yourself.'

'I "got over myself" the day I realised I'm just a piece of meat for people to fight over,' Kevin says stiffly, stopping and staring Sam down. 'You, Dean, Crowley, the angels. Trust me, Sam, I know I'm just a pawn to everyone else in this game. I read all Chuck's dumb books, remember? I can do the math on my life expectancy. So, forgive me for trying to get shit done while I'm still breathing.'

'The painkillers - they're a crutch,' Sam says, breaking the eye contact.

Kevin's too tired for this shit, head's too swimmy, gut's too sore. 'Yeah, well, maybe my legs are broken,' he says, and leaves.

***

The day of being passed-out and the boiling resentment conspire to throw Kevin's already whacked-out sleep schedule completely off. He lurches out of bed at four am to stare at the tablet because he's sure he'll get another symbol this time, only to spend three hours glaring at the stupid thing and getting nowhere. The next vision hits him when he's actually considering going back to bed, and it's Dean on the phone. That's all. Just Dean on the phone, talking about taking things one day at a time. He tells the person on the other end to _take care, brother_. 

Kevin wonders if this is God's way of agreeing with Sam about him going on the wagon or something. He writes it down anyway. 

Sam, when he gets up, avoids Kevin and manages to almost make himself completely invisible somehow, which is a talent when you're built like a brick wall and living in a cramped boat, but then again Kevin's doing his damndest to keep his head down and ignore Sam anyway, so maybe it's just synergy. 

The pain in his head has become a living thing, so constant he doesn't even think of it as pain, more like the default state of his own private universe, or like a monster that's moved right into his brain.

Kevin crashes again at about mid-morning, still can't be bothered to actually put sheets on his bed so he just hauls a blanket over himself on the bare mattress. It works. 

The next morning … okay, mid-afternoon, but whatever, when Kevin gets up, there's a stack of printed pages in Courier New, ten point, double-spaced, on the table. It's all his notes, typed up, and it looks like Sam's tried to organise them. Kevin leafs through, and realises they're loosely organised by subject matter, and Sam's tried to put them in some kind of chronological order within his guessed categories.

This is good. Scary-good. Okay, some bits are still out of sync with how Kevin remembers them happening, the order that they hit him, but … he scans through, starts to see more connections, picks up a pen just to make a couple of notes - and when he next looks up there's a plate of still-warm hamburgers in front of him and Sam's across the table, raising an eyebrow and a glass.

'This is good,' says Kevin, the words falling out of his mouth before he can stop it, or remember that he's still mad at Sam. 'I - thanks.'

'Every little bit helps, huh?' Sam says. He should be angry too, still, shouldn't he? He doesn't sound it.

'I don't even know how you did it,' Kevin says, poring over the pages. 'How did you -?'

Sam shrugs, tips his glass back. He doesn't even flinch when the bourbon hits his throat, Kevin notices. 'Dad used to go off for weeks at a time, take Dean with him too when I was older. He'd leave me a couple dozen old newspapers and the run of the closest public library, and they'd need intel fast sometimes, you know? Even if it was best-guess level. I guess I just got the hang of which guesses to make.'

'How are you at crossword puzzles?' Kevin asks, still distracted by how Sam's somehow picked out the thread of the Crowley-centric visions into a coherent series even though those dreams came scattered over three weeks and interspersed with, for some reason, a recurring vision of a tall, heavy-set man with a Louisiana-or-thereabouts accent cooking gumbo. 

Sam laughs. 'Prefer those sudoku things, but yeah, I do crosswords when I get the time. Not that I do, much.'

Kevin understands that. There's always something more important to do than the things you enjoy. Apparently he says that out loud because Sam gives him a funny look and yanks his empty coffee cup across the table, hooking the handle on one of his long fingers, and after giving it a quick, slant-eyed look, pours a slug of bourbon in and pushes it back over. 

'You gotta make time, every so often,' Sam says softly, pouring himself one as well.

Kevin drinks the bourbon down, and he does wince when it slides hot down the back of his throat, but he likes the way that heat spreads through his core like a blanket, the way it numbs the ache in his head, so he shunts the mug back for a second helping.

***

'You should write it all up, you know,' says Sam, half a bottle later. He's shuffling through the notes he typed. 'It's a story.' 

'It's your story,' Kevin disagrees. 'Well, you, and Dean, and lots of people. It should be private.'

'Most of them'll never know,' Sam points out. 'And me an' Dean, well.' He shrugs. 'Feels like everyone in the world knows our business sometimes.'

'Wish I didn't,' says Kevin. 'Didn't want it. Didn't ask for it. It's like keeping everyone's secrets.'

Sam's still reading. 'Someone has to,' he says, and looks up. 'You're the only one who sees all the clues, Kevin. You gotta do the crossword puzzle. You know?'

'Why me?'

'Why not you?' Sam asks, devil's advocate. 'Gotta be someone.'

Kevin snorts. 'Not helping,' 

'No, really,' says Sam, and he puts the notes down and rests his sharp chin in his big hand, leaning forward. He'd shuffled his chair around a while ago so that he could pore over the tablet without having to pull it away from Kevin, and now they're almost side-by-side, but oblique across the table's corner. 'Been worse prophets, I'm pretty sure. You're smart, you're focused. You're kind of stupid with your own health when you're working. Fuck Heaven for putting you in this position, sure, I get that, and I'm mad for you, because destiny fucking sucks, but I see why they picked you.'

He's intent on Kevin's face when he says it. And Sam holds his liquor well because of his size and because of practice, years of bars and scams and his brother's competition, and he's not exactly drunk, but it's like the bourbon's taken a layer of his filters away, to let him say things like this. Because Kevin knows, Sam's never like this with people who aren't his brother. Or maybe he's lying and this is a scam and he's salting his words with that sincere face to get Kevin to show his hand here.

But Kevin's no poker player.

If he's being conned, it's already too late for him, and he's been adrift alone with his stupid destiny for so long. He's tired of it. He's tired of burner phones and tinned mystery meat and he's tired of the foot of space between him and the only human contact he's had in months. He's tired of watching Sam running and the nagging feeling it gives him of looking in a mirror.

'Well, I don't,' Kevin says, standing up to reach across and snag the bottle of bourbon himself. 'But they did. So I'm gonna fucking do this.' 

'And after?' Sam asks, staring up into Kevin's face, and yes, fuck, he's a con-man through and through - but Kevin's a translator, remember? Lies are the oldest language, maybe, and he's getting good at Sam's, at least. 

Kevin's been telling himself so long that this prophet thing is a phase, and he's known almost as long that it _isn't_ , but he kept hoping. False, stupid hope. Time to wake up. 'There isn't an after,' he says, drinks down another swallow, straight from the bottle, and the burn in his veins might not just be alcohol any more. 'I'm in this for life, Sam. I _am_ this for life. I have to accept that, right?'

Sam stares at him like he's speaking Enochian. Kevin yanks him in by his chin and an accidental half-handful of his hair, and kisses him.

Sam tastes like light and fire. He tastes like everything destructive and full of regret and absolutely glorious Kevin was ever warned off and didn't try even though he wanted to. He hovers his hands around Kevin's hips - Kevin can feel the heat, no pressure - and he lets Kevin in. 

Eventually Kevin gets sick of leaning down, and he sinks into Sam's lap. Sam lets him. Sam takes his weight and those big hands finally do settle on Kevin's hips to hold him steady. Sam licks into Kevin's mouth and chases every move Kevin makes with his own.

Backing off just a little, because he's getting in too deep, kissing the corner of Sam's parted mouth because he doesn't really want to stop touching, Kevin can see that that wrinkle of concentration in Sam's forehead is gone. His eyes are closed, and he leans in, chases the sensation when Kevin pulls away just that little bit. 

And it's good. For once, something is simple, something doesn't hurt and is easy and kind and Kevin didn't foresee it, didn't have to wrestle for it. If he wants to get a bit drunk and kiss this person, he can, and his destiny - _both_ of their destinies - can just shut up and hang on for the ride. 

***

Kevin vaguely remembers trying for skin, wanting Sam's warmth and closeness hard up against him, and Sam kissing his throat, tucked up tight under his jaw, and saying, 'No, no,' softly, catching Kevin's hands and just holding him - not away, not hard, just firm, while Kevin squirmed on his lap and panted his name and wanted something, very badly, that Sam didn't want to give him. 

'Sam ...' Kevin said, and Sam juggled things so that he could get his long fingers around both of Kevin's wrists at once and brought the other hand up to stroke the hair at Kevin's temple.

'No,' Sam said. 'Not that. Just this,' and kissed and kissed and kissed until Kevin couldn't think anymore.

Kevin mostly remembers the taste of fire and the burn of wanting something he couldn't have. 

***

Kevin wakes up slow, for once; slow and warm. No alarm startles him into hyperawareness. He just sort of comes to, drifts into blinking and still on the edges of being drunk, and even slower realises that he's not alone in the bed, and it's not his bed anyway.

'Hey,' says Sam, an inch away from him. They're not touching, but Kevin can feel the warmth of Sam's body. 'You're awake.' He sounds as slow and groggy as Kevin feels.

'How much bourbon did we drink?' Kevin mumbles.

Sam's smile is rueful. 'Most of the bottle. You feeling okay?'

'Yeah,' says Kevin, and he can't help smiling too, in reaction to Sam. 'Feel ... yeah, okay.' He stretches and looks around, pushing up onto one elbow.

'Sorry about -' Sam says, kind of waving a hand at the fact that they're both in the same bed. 'Yours looked rank and I ... wasn't thinking straight. So I just figured, put you in here, crawled in too.' He's starting to look more and more awkward about it. 'We didn't -'

'Thanks,' says Kevin, resisting the urge to flop back into the warm bed linen, because this is another person's bed and he should probably have some boundaries or at least not act like a five year old. He really wants to just sort of curl up against Sam, in the crooked space under his arm and against his chest, because it looks warm and comfortable there and sleep is really tempting right now. 

But, 'I'll just -' Sam says, starting to get up, and Kevin catches him by the wrist on reflex. The move is too fast, though, and that familiar grumble starts up in Kevin's stomach and head. The monster is waking up again. 

'Don't be dumb,' Kevin says, swallowing bile, and pushes himself into a sitting position on the edge of the mattress instead. 'It's your bed. Stay. I'll go ...' and he means to say 'make breakfast' but his guts rebel at the bare thought of it. 'I'll just -' he says, as all the bourbon decides it's going to make a break for freedom. He only just makes it to the bathroom. 

The fact that two days is Kevin's longest unbroken streak of not up-chucking is really, really sad. He hangs his head basically in the toilet bowl and waits for the nausea to make up its mind about whether or not it's done emptying his stomach.

'So, I'm glad I could provide you with at least one proper college-age experience,' Sam says, footsteps soft on the cold metal floor. 

Kevin gives him the finger without looking up. 'You're hilarious.'

Sam sighs warmly, closer now. 'I was hoping you'd get a break from this now you'd stopped taking the Advil.'

'I probably would have if I hadn't gone straight onto alcohol,' Kevin groans. He pulls himself back onto his haunches and looks up at Sam. 'I'm guessing you're still going to enforce cold turkey?'

Sam shrugs. 'No choice. I flushed it all. Come on,' he says, reaching for Kevin to pull him to his feet. Kevin does curl into him now, and Sam doesn't push him away. As they leave the bathroom, though, Sam pulls back. 

'So, last night -' he starts.

'Was okay, right?' says Kevin, cutting him off. This can be one thing, at least, that Sam doesn't have to blame himself for.

Sam pushes Kevin gently, but really insistently, into straddling a chair. Kevin lets his head rest against the back, and waits. Sure enough, Sam starts gently massaging just at the base of his skull, where all the knots start. 

'Was a bad idea, is what I was about to say,' says Sam, working Kevin over like he's kneading bread. 

'Gee, thanks,' Kevin says sourly into the chair. 'Is this another part of the college experience I missed out on? Do I get to do the walk of shame later?'

'You _do_ know we didn't actually - you know, right?' Sam asks.

''You know'?' Kevin says, rolling his eyes even though Sam can't see him. 'Good, because I make a point of only doing 'you know' with people who can actually say it.'

'You were drunk,' Sam says, ignoring him. 'I mean, it's not that under other … circumstances I wouldn't -'

'It's just that us hooking up is a 'bad idea',' Kevin finishes for him. He pushes up off the chair, despite the fact that his spine is still a knotted mess and his skull is still drumming, not that that ever really fades. 'And we can't afford bad ideas right now.'

'Kevin ...'

'I'm going to get back to work,' Kevin says, moving to the other side of the table where he can sit in a chair like a normal person and stare at his piece of Scripture like a normal person and pretend he doesn't want to just go back to bed and pass out. Like a normal person.

He rests his chin on one hand and wishes he had a coffee mug to grab with the other. Wishes, blindly and hungrily, that he had a handful of little white pills to swallow, the kind that would smother the pain-monster locked in his body at least for a little while. It never lasted, but it helped, and more importantly there was always that little flare of hope that this time, the drugs would win and he'd feel normal _\- like a normal person -_ again.

'My … hookups … tend to die,' Sam says, out of the blue. Kevin looks up, and Sam's in the doorway, leaning on the frame and looking tired - no, exhausted. Like standing is an effort. 

'I know,' says Kevin after a moment trying to think of what, exactly, the fuck to say to that.

Sam shrugs at Kevin as if this is effective communication. 'Hence bad idea,' he offers, after a moment, and Kevin just … he just can't anymore. 

'Oh my god, get over yourself,' he says, turning back to the tablet because it might be gibberish but at least it _occasionally_ makes some goddamn sense. 'I just … okay, there are probably a lot of good reasons we shouldn't 'you know' -' he makes a face, '- but none of them are specific to us. They're not supernatural reasons, you know? So if you don't wanna, just say it. But if you do, if you were holding out on me last night because _your hookups tend to die_ , well, that's kind of bullshit. I'm neck-deep in the same crap you are, for my own reasons. Pretty sure that 'banged Sam Winchester' is not gonna be at the top of my rap sheet.'

He looks up, because that was kind of a speech that he hadn't really intended to make, and Sam's staring at him. 

'What?' he asks.

Sam shakes his head, and something like a smile flits across his face. 'Nothing,' he says, and sits down, pulling his laptop over. They settle back into a working rhythm - typing and muttering to themselves and thumbing through books, and it's nice but Kevin's head is still itching with information needed and not given. He thinks it's the tablet at first, but when he pushes it aside and stares up at the rusty join between boat-ceiling and the wall with his research on it, tries to unfocus and think through sigils and pieces of known text and unknown text, it doesn't go away. 

Sam's staring at his laptop, mouthing something that looks like Latin silently, and it's him, he's still the unknown here, the big gap in the story Kevin's supposed to be pulling together. 

The question bubbles up before Kevin can think about it - the same kind of impulse that makes you flop a text open to the exact passage you need. 'Tell me about Amelia,' Kevin asks quietly. For a minute he's not even sure Sam heard him.

'No,' says Sam, still staring down, still squinting at something long ago. He looks up, mulish, after a second. 'If you need to know it, you'll see it, won't you?'

'I only see things that are important to the assholes upstairs,' Kevin points out, folding his arms. 'That doesn't help me know what's going on with you.'

'I haven't seen Amelia in months,' Sam says, still stonewalling.

Kevin sighs. 'I'm not trying to pry, man,' he says. 'I just. I feel like there's data I'm missing, y'know? You were the one that told me I had to do the crossword puzzle and tell the world the story or whatever. I need a vowel here, or something. Character motivation, whatever the hell.'

Sam is staring at him. Kevin shrugs, helplessly. 'I can't ever seem to get a read on you, that's all,' he says. 'You want this told right, you gotta fill me in on some bits.'

'She wasn't Jess,' Sam says after a really long, cold moment. 'She wasn't Dean. Wasn't family, you know? I didn't owe her, or love her, not like that. But she needed someone to ... look, you ever get into something scary, something bad, and the only way you hang on is to take care of someone else, someone who's doing worse than you?'

'Yeah, I guess,' says Kevin, thinking about his mom.

'Well, I was worse. I was just about done,' Sam says. He looks aside for a moment like he's gonna make a run for it. 'Like, _done_. Dean was gone, I had no leads ... I've lost him so many times, man, and it never stops hurting. I was running, I had no idea where I even was, and I was gonna find a quiet spot to eat my goddamn gun, and then -'

'You hit the dog,' Kevin fills in, cos this bit of the story he's dreamt of Sam telling before. Just this bit. 

'Yeah. And Amelia, she - I - Fuck, we were both messes. But it was like having a life preserver, suddenly. Something I could _do_. She needed a person. I was -' he snorts bitterly, '- I mean, I barely felt like a person, but that was kind of the point. She'd had all these people, her family, trying to take care of her when she didn't want it. She needed … not to be useless, and I -'

Kevin kind of gets where Sam is going with this, and the broken sentences and the way Sam's squinting like it hurts to think … he's heard enough. 'Makes sense,' he says, lamely, looking away. He needed to know this. But like everything else, now that he does he wishes he didn't. He wishes he could say something, but he doesn't know how, so the silence stretches on. 

Sam takes it the wrong way. 'Sorry,' he says, shrugging. 'Dunno what you thought it was. Dunno what Heaven thought it was, why they wanted you to write it down. Don't even really know what Dean thinks about the whole thing, except that I let him down again. But it was just - it was a way to get through. And I'm not proud of that, but that's what it was.'

Kevin wonders if there's anything in his life that Sam _is_ proud of. 

'You'd have got through,' he says instead of voicing that thought. 'Like you told me,' he adds, not sure if this is a connection he should be making out loud even though it's the one that's yelling at him like a new word in the tablet. 'You'd have done it anyway.'

Sam's mouth twists, but he holds Kevin's gaze with his dark, bloodshot eyes, takes the point. They both have the worst coping mechanisms, and it's funny, kind of, because neither of them is coping at all.

***

Kevin rubs his forehead. The pain is rising up again like a cork he can't quite keep underwater. He keeps writing, because what else can he do? There are words surfacing along with the pain, words like _soul_ and _rescue_. It's the second trial, he realises. 

'Kevin?' Sam says, when Kevin drops the tablet to the tabletop in a hurry to write before the cramps start. 

'Trial,' Kevin mutters at him, too involved to construct a decent sentence.

Sam nods. 'I'll call Dean.' Just like that. All business, Kevin thinks again muzzily. Because Winchesters don't have relationships that aren't with each other. Because nothing is important to them if it isn't the goddamn end of the world.

Dean is to Sam like the tablets are to Kevin; that combination of dragging you down and raising you up, that constant nagging obsession, that place you spin around. That's why, Kevin guesses. Dean is where Sam goes for answers. Dean is where Sam looks first for everything.

Because when you get right down to it, everyone else dies on Sam.

Kevin read the goddamn books. He knows. Sam dies, and Dean dies, but they come back. They come back hurt and they come back ruined and they come back far away from each other and they have to crawl pretty much over broken glass sometimes to do it, but they always come back. 

Everyone else dies. 

Maybe Kevin is going to die. And Sam knows it, and is keeping his distance because he's burned enough - dear God, has he burned enough - and ...

No. Fuck that, Kevin is not going to die. Not from this, or anything else they're gonna throw at him. He is making a goddamn decision about this right now. He is not. Going. To die. He's gonna claw his way through this Destiny crap as long as he can, and anyone else he finds he's gonna pull along with him, so there. Including Sam, if he has to. And Heaven can go screw itself, because martyrdom is for suckers. 

Sam's already got his phone up to his ear. Kevin's head is pounding. He can't remember how to hold a pen, his fingers are so tightly-cramped. He wonders if Mohammed had to deal with this bullshit. 

He keeps scribbling. It's all here, sudden sentences appearing where before it was just tantalising marks. The second trial is to rescue an innocent soul from Hell. Kevin scratches the nib of the pen across the paper, blotting ink like clouds in his hurry over the scuffed surface of the pad. This is a hero-tale trial. This is everything from Orpheus and Eurydice to Mario and Princess Peach. On paper it's a fetch-quest. Rescue an innocent soul from Hell. It sounds so simple. 

Sam's talking hurriedly in the periphery of Kevin's awareness, talking to Dean, more words than he's spoken to Kevin in a week, all at once. 

Sam Winchester rode the Devil all the way into underworld, and if the way down killed him, the way back up was worse. And that's just what got written down, the sanitised Heaven-approved prophecy version. Kevin has an awful feeling that living through it was something else entirely. 

Sam is going to have to go back to Hell for this, and Kevin doesn't want to have to be the one to tell him that. 

He clutches at his pen convulsively like he can stop himself writing it down, but it's too late. Sam does crossword puzzles when he has the time. Sam sees things others miss. Sam runs because every bridge he tries to build burns out from under him. Sam does whatever he has to to get through.

Sam takes the pen gently out of Kevin's knotted hand and puts it down on the table-top. He runs his thumb along the nape of Kevin's neck, over and over, while he's talking to Dean. Kevin, the translator, stares at the deep-incised ancient clay in front of his nose and listens to Sam's rushed colloquial English and the only thing he understands is that he is being touched, that Sam Winchester is making unnecessary contact with something external, and it's him. 

Sam reads out what Kevin wrote down the phone to Dean, and his fingers on Kevin's neck freeze halfway through the sentence. 

Kevin passes out thinking about anchors and navigation lights, red on your left and green on your right and white up high like a star to show you the way home. 

***

Sam starts packing first thing the next morning. It's the rattle of shotgun cartridges spilling across the metal floor that wakes Kevin up.

In the cold, dusty light that slips through what little of the windows is left uncovered by sigils, Sam looks like death. His hands are shaking where he's trying to pick the cartridges up. Kevin drops to his knees and starts to help. 

'You're leaving?' he asks, because what else is he going to say?

'Dean's on his way,' Sam says. Apparently that's all there is to it. 'He should be here by tomorrow, maybe even this evening if he's not that bothered about speed limits.'

'You don't look like you're in any condition to be going anywhere,' Kevin points out. 'Dude, you look like you went five rounds with the Incredible Hulk.'

'Says the guy who passes out pretty much on a daily basis,' Sam retorts. 

'Hey, I got an indoor job with no heavy lifting. You're planning on slamming the door on Hell.'

Sam gives him this exhausted, amused look - gallows humour in a glance - and says, 'Well, someone has to. And you got the indoor job.' He laughs, and it turns into a hacking, wet cough into his fist. 

'Coffee?' Kevin offers, not wanting to stay on the floor here and have to pretend that he can't see what's going on, the red oozing over Sam's skin.

'Sure,' Sam says, probably for the same reason. 

Kevin makes coffee in a habit-formed blur like he's enacting an arcane ritual, and while he's waiting for the water to boil he rests his head against the cold smooth surface of the refrigerator door and tries to breathe.

'It's not as bad as it looks,' Sam says from behind him.

Kevin rolls his eyes. 'Bullshit,' he says. He pushes himself away from the refrigerator and turns around. Sam's pulling the kicked puppy face. 'I think it's exactly as bad as it looks,' Kevin says. 'I think that's the point. That's why they're called trials.'

Sam steps into Kevin's space, and he's a wall, and he's still got that little case of the shakes in his hands when he raises one to push his hair out of his face, but there's a spark in his eyes that wasn't there before. 'Yeah, I guess so,' he says. 'Feels good to have a goal again, though, you know?'

'Sam,' Kevin starts, but Sam comes closer again, like he wants something maybe, and Kevin is so on board with that.

'This is still a bad idea,' Sam says, but it's a get-out-of-jail-free card. Kevin steps in, closer, before Sam can decide to run again.

'No, it isn't,' Kevin says, looking up at him. They're body-to-body, and Sam's trembling. 'We both know it isn't. This is just a thing people do with each other.' Sam's staring at him, assessing and focused and somehow a little not all here, fine tremors running through him that Kevin can't definitively assign to fatigue or whatever the trials are doing to him or just a hard-held brand of control. 'Pills are a bad idea,' Kevin presses him. 'Booze is a bad idea, and pushing people away, and not eating, and -'

'I get the picture,' says Sam, cracking a half-smile. Something's different in him already - it's like knowing what the next trial is, even though it's shitty, awful, something Kevin would never want to do in a million years, has energised him somehow. 

Sam is going to leave and Kevin is going to sit here alone and work, and he has to be okay with that, because he has to get through this. Because they're going to do their jobs, regardless, and he can beat his head against it all he likes or he can pick it up and run with it, and anything good that comes with it. Like this.

' _This_ is not a bad idea,' Kevin says to Sam, as if he can make it make sense just by saying it enough. Sam's hot under his hands. 'Sam. If you want to do this, you can. We can.'

Sam's looking down at him, half curled into him almost, and his hands have found Kevin's hips again. 'I do,' he says. 'Believe me, I do. But tell me you never saw it,' he says. 'Tell me this isn't something Heaven's been plotting.'

Kevin fists his fingers in Sam's shirts, drags him even closer. 'No script,' he says. 'I swear. I'm flying just as blind as you are.'

Sam buries his face in Kevin's neck, grabs him up, and before Kevin knows what's happening he hits the table in the main cabin back-first, Sam coming to rest braced over him, hot and panting and wild-eyed. It's just like all of Chuck's trashy books, except for how Kevin can feel this, just like watching Sam with Amelia that one last time except for how he can see the smile crinkling the corners of Sam's eyes.

Kevin pushes himself up on his elbows for a kiss before he can say something stupid. Sam opens up to him in a rush, pushy and needy all at once, and Kevin finds himself dragging his hands up under Sam's shirt. Sam's letting him, this time. Sam's arching into it, like he wants it the way Kevin wants it. Kevin traces his fingers under the cloth, not quite believing he's allowed.

Sam's skin is already wet with sweat, fine and smooth and burning under Kevin's hands. Sam gasps into Kevin's mouth when he finds the waistband of Sam's jeans and traces it around to the front, to where they're jammed together, and pushes until he finds Sam's fly. 

Kevin hesitates. 'Can I?' he asks in something that feels more like a whisper than he meant it too. Sam shivers against him.

'Yeah,' he says. He lifts up so Kevin has more space, pulls his shirt off while he's up there and then goes for Kevin's, trying to wriggle the hems of Kevin's t-shirts up and pull them over his head while Kevin yanks his jeans open and down. 

Kevin shoves his own jeans off as soon as his hands are clear, and Sam leans back into him, furnace-hot and eager like burning, nipping at the soft place under Kevin's jaw while he rocks them together. The friction through two sets of underwear is intense, makes Kevin feel like he's shaking to pieces every time they drag against each other.

Sex is still novel but it isn't new to Kevin, not as a concept or an activity. Sex with a guy is, but only because when you're gunning for good grades to get out of high school, you stick to the script. Nice smart girls you like hanging out with anyway are part of the script. Even so much as peeking out of the closet isn't. So Kevin figured he'd be patient and experiment with his potential bisexuality in college like everyone else. 

Yeah. That went well.

But now he's got this, here, and he doesn't know what he's doing but he can learn. Sam's marking up his collarbones, little bites that barely sting, licking and sucking, and Kevin only realises he's making noises when Sam looks up at him wickedly and moves lower. Sam's already in control of this, and Kevin can't help but grind his shoulders back into the tabletop when Sam starts licking his nipple. He's braced on one arm over Kevin, dragging his free hand down to the damp mess of underwear between them, biting down on the nipple he's been teasing just as he slides his hand around the shape of Kevin's cock.

'Fuck,' Kevin says, bucking up into the touch and trying to get his legs up around Sam's waist instead of dangling uncomfortably off the edge of the table. Sam must notice, because he puts both hands back on Kevin's waist - Kevin bites his lip rather than whine at the loss of touch elsewhere - and lifts, pushes them both all the way up onto its surface. Even weakened, sickening for something Kevin can't translate fast enough to understand, Sam's still freakishly strong. 

The table creaks loud under them, paper crunches and rustles too, but Kevin's feet finally find some grip and he's too busy appreciating the fact that he's got leverage now against Sam's slow-rolling hips to worry that much about the table. He pushes up, slides his hands down to rest on Sam's ass and toys with the idea of slipping his fingers in under the waistband of his underwear. It's addicting, the catch of the cloth and the slick of Sam's skin under the pads of Kevin's fingers, and he rubs back and forth, thinking it over.

Sam grins down at him, hands on either side of Kevin's head, and bends to nip at Kevin's ear. 'You wanna?' he asks in a whisper. His own fingers are already tucked into Kevin's boxers, starting to pull. 'You gonna?'

'Yeah,' Kevin says, too stupid with want to come up with something clever to say. They drag at each other's underwear but they get caught up, tangled, and Kevin's palm glides once against Sam's ass before Sam's pushing up and away enough, huffing a laugh, to ditch his briefs and give Kevin the space to haul his boxers off. 

As soon as they're naked, as soon as there's nothing but air between them, Kevin hits the table again with a thud, and it protests hard. Sam's all over him again, single-minded focus and what he's focused on is the taste of Kevin, the feel of him - Kevin's thighs fall open and Sam sinks between them, leans on one forearm and takes himself and Kevin in hand, big fingers wrapping them together. 

Kevin slings his arms around Sam's shoulders and hangs on for the ride, lets Sam nose and nudge his way back to the sore places along his neck, his collarbone where he was biting before. Kevin feels like he's spinning out of control. It's heady. It's good. So good.

Sam's hand drops the pressure off when Kevin starts to feel his eyes roll back in his head, pulls him back off the edge of orgasm and he does whine, breathless through his teeth, in protest at that, but Sam smiles against his skin and says, 'Would you let me?' with his fingers edging back over Kevin's balls and behind, lower. 

And Kevin says, 'Oh,' blinking stupidly when he realises. And Sam pulls up, starts to trace lines along Kevin's thigh instead when he doesn't say anything else because his brain is in a state of fireworks, understanding and learning and hungry for more.

There's too much air between them, Kevin thinks, realises suddenly. Sam's sitting up again. 

'Sorry,' Sam says, breathing hard and controlled like he's holding back. 'I didn't mean -'

'No, that's not,' says Kevin, pushing up on his hands to chase Sam, who's pulling back further now. 'Jeez - yes, you can, Sam -' and he's chasing Sam's touch-heat-taste and the table gives another warning creak. 

'Yeah?' Sam says, low and urgent. 

'Yeah,' Kevin returns, getting his hand back in Sam's hair and pulling until they're kissing again. They're shaking the table, Kevin on his knees with Sam's arms wrapped around him. 

'We gotta move,' Sam says, pulling away, unfolding his long legs so he can get off the table. Kevin feels the wood lurch under him as Sam's weight comes off it, and he scrambles to follow. 

'Bedroom,' he says, as Sam pushes him up against the wall. 'Bedroom?' 

Sam slides his hands into Kevin's hair and bites at his bottom lip, licks into his mouth again and Kevin grinds up against him. 

'Yeah,' Sam breathes when he eases back. 'Bedroom.' He steers Kevin the two steps left, backwards into his cabin and straight onto the bed. 

'Better in here anyway,' says Sam, crawling over Kevin. 'Means we can do this properly.' He runs his fingers gently over Kevin's throat, collarbones, and Kevin sucks in a harsh breath and realises in a rush of heat that he's gonna have a shitload of hickeys tomorrow morning. 'And I want us to do this properly,' Sam says, almost growling it.

'Haven't done anything else properly,' Kevin points out, knees up around Sam's hips and pulling at him already, because jesus fuck. 

'So we should start now.' Sam stretches out to the side, snags his duffle bag and starts rifling through it. 'Yeah?' While he snags whatever it was he was looking for (Kevin can guess what, he's not stupid), he keeps his other hand moving over Kevin's skin and smiles back down. He's so thin, even when he smiles it only makes it clearer, but something's burning hot in his eyes, some fire that wasn't there before.

'Something like that,' says Kevin, worming his fingers into Sam's to winkle out the - yep, the condom packet and the lube. 'C'mon, Sam.' He doesn't want to think, he just wants to feel. He wants Sam to do this.

Sam clenches his fist over Kevin's fingers. 'Like I said,' he says. 'Gonna do this properly.' 

He pulls the lube free and rips it open, and it oozes over his fingers. And Kevin's breath hitches because of the raw way Sam's looking at him when he leans back down, and touches. 

Sam's gentle, insistent, forceful in the kind of way that lets Kevin breathe, takes all his concentration just to parse and washes every other thing away, and Sam works his fingers into Kevin one at a time, tiny push in, tiny tug out, over and over, increment by increment, until Kevin's moaning loud enough to echo against the metal walls of the cabin. Sam's biting his own lip, then mouthing at the hinge of Kevin's jaw by two fingers in. Kevin feels full, kinda bruised-warm, worked over, the feel of this replacing the aching, nagging, sore-tooth-sensation he's been fighting for months, the pain of his destiny pummelled to surrender by Sam's big hands. 

Three fingers is sore, purple like a bruise behind Kevin's eyes, but the way Sam cradles him under his body, curls those three long, thick fingers until Kevin sees lights white behind his eyelids, that makes it good, makes it right, makes Kevin flatten his knees out to give Sam space to work and that just makes Sam chuckle and lean in closer. 

'You ready?' Sam asks, still push-pulling his fingers between Kevin's legs but there's more pull than push. Kevin wants to rock back and keep him where he is, because there's sparks and heat in his fingers every time Sam moves in him, but the way Sam's looking at him like he wants to eat him up says the next step is gonna feel better. 

'Ready,' Kevin pants, and Sam smiles like a knife and wriggles the condom out of Kevin's hand where he'd forgotten he was clutching it. 

'Gonna need that,' he says. 'You don't know where I've been.'

'Yeah I do,' Kevin mutters, and Sam rolls his eyes while he rolls on the condom. He lines up, braces, the muscles of his forearms standing out like ropes, and Kevin arches his neck, back, shoves his shoulders into the mattress and welcomes him in.

It's pressure. All around, pressure, and it phantom-spreads everywhere, til Kevin's fingers and toes are curling and he's feeling pressed like he's under a weight as Sam slides home, slow and steady and biting his lip whiter than white. Kevin can't breathe. It's possibly the best feeling he's had in the last six months.

'Hey, hey, look at me,' Sam says after the movement stops, and he curls a hand around the back of Kevin's head and tilts forwards, forcing Kevin's spine to unbend. 'Hey. You okay? Kevin?'

Sam shifts just the tiniest fraction and white-out firework sparks flash through Kevin's body just for a second and he drags in another breath. 'Yes, fuck,' Kevin says, pushing up on one flat palm, nudging Sam's jaw and then up at his ear, wanting to kiss and not quite having the coordination to do it because every time he moves - 'Sam, please. I need you to -' he doesn't know what he needs Sam to do, just that he needs Sam to do _something_.

'Yeah,' says Sam, and he rolls his hips and Kevin pushes himself up just that bit higher, and Sam hitches Kevin's knees higher around his hips and shoves his hand up against the small of Kevin's back and practically welds them together, snapping his hips hard. 

Kevin knows he whimpers, mouthing sloppy kisses against Sam's shoulder, wanting that again and again and again because it lights him up inside.

'This is crazy,' Sam says, tight and low into Kevin's hair, giving it to Kevin hard and fast and perfect even as he says it. 'Tell me this isn't just a substitute. Tell me this isn't just another fucking thing we're using,' he pleads, rough and staccato over the top of his rolling rhythm. 

Kevin wraps his legs around Sam, heels practically digging into the meat of his thighs. 'It's not,' he says, canting his hips, trying to get better leverage, more of that sweetness that underlies the friction. He slicks his hands down Sam's back. 'It's not drugs, and it's not destiny, Sam, it's just -' Sam kisses him again, hard, with teeth and tongue, and Kevin lets the words go, tries to make the point with his body, and Sam doesn't let up kissing, doesn't let up shoving himself into Kevin, just wraps his free hand around Kevin's cock and strokes, and Kevin, finally, stops thinking. 

Kevin comes like that, with Sam all over him, in him, the taste of Sam against his tongue, and for just a moment it's like the world goes still, calm, and then Sam tears himself free of their kiss and arches, slams one time more into Kevin, and his orgasm breaks Kevin's calm world back into storms and fire and sensation.

'Oh, fuck,' says Sam, a little brokenly, into Kevin's hairline.

Kevin breathes hard, coming down, and he stretches an arm up to pet Sam's hair. 'You okay?' he asks, and his voice is raw, rougher than he expects.

Sam laughs, pushes himself up on his arms to look down at Kevin. 'Yeah,' he says. He makes a face, fumbles down between them to grab the edge of the condom and pull out. 

That is ... possibly the weirdest sensation Kevin has ever felt. He must make a face, because Sam laughs again, throwing the condom into the corner of the cabin and flopping down to the side, weight off Kevin but still plastered up against him in the little saggy bed. 

Kevin starts to doze almost immediately, washing in and out of sleep as he gets warm, comfortable, as he relaxes into the mattress and into Sam's side. Sam snugs an arm over him after a little while, turns in towards him, and for the first time in months, Kevin doesn't ache anywhere, doesn't hurt. 

He sleeps, and he doesn't dream.

***

Sam makes pancakes again.

His duffle bag is up by the door - full of shirts wrapped around hex-bags, ammunition in boxes, bottle of gun-oil clinking against his frankly alarming collection of knives - and he tucked his gun into his waistband in the morning while Kevin watched sleepy-eyed from the bed, and it was like watching a knight arming for a battle. 

Sam pads into the kitchen after getting dressed, and there's a faint glugging noise and the chink of glass. Kevin pulls on a pair of sweatpants and wanders out after him, watches silently as the last of the bourbon runs down the drain. 

Neither of them says a word. 

Sam makes pancakes, and Kevin watches him do it, and watches the way his shirt-hem rises when he reaches for something and reveals the sliver of gun-barrel chrome nestled against his spine. The table wobbles when Sam puts the plates down on it. Kevin is going to have to uncrumple an awful lot of notes later, but frankly he doesn't give a shit. 

The sound of the Impala pulling up outside while they're doing the dishes - it really is the least stealthy car on the planet - shatters the glassy calm inside the cabin like it's a soap bubble.

'I guess this is goodbye for a while then, huh,' says Kevin, turning to put away a plate. He nearly drops it, he's trying so hard to keep this casual, normal, calm. 'You'd better come back,' he adds. When he turns back, Sam yanks him into a hug with wet hands. 

'You know this isn't healthy,' Sam says fiercely into Kevin's hair, holding him tight. 'For either of us. You know we're just hanging on here, right?'

There's a knock at the iron houseboat door. Kevin ignores it.

'Yeah,' he says instead, sliding his hand under the hem of Sam's shirt just to feel him warm and alive again against his palm. 'But hey. Better than running.'

Sam bends to kiss him again, cupping Kevin's face in his hands and keeping it soft, sweet. He tastes just a little of blood but the warmth of the bourbon is all gone, and his eyes might be dark and sunk in his face but they're full of fire. 'I _will_ come back,' he says, just as the door rattles with Dean's key in the lock, and starts to open. 'We're not done yet.'


End file.
